The lobbying strength of big business is puny compared to that of the global NGOs

It's hard not to admire George Monbiot for publishing all his earnings. As he says, journalists often have a giving-it-out-but-not-taking-it problem. I know a columnist, for example, who often writes that Britain needs to export more weapons, but who has never, to my knowledge, divulged that he goes shooting at the expense of a prominent arms dealer. This doesn't stop him dismissing MPs as uniquely venal and corrupt.

What has prompted Monbiot's transparency? He explains it like this:

The question of who pays for public advocacy has become an obsession of mine. I’ve seen how groups purporting to be spontaneous gatherings of grassroots activists, fighting the regulation of tobacco or demanding that governments should take no action on climate change, have in fact been created and paid for by corporations: a practice known as astroturfing.

He's on to something, though it doesn't follow that these groups are wrong to oppose regulation. As Delingpole points out, this is the 'Motive Fallacy'. You might have a personal interest in saying something, yet it might none the less be true. Still, it is surely better for everything to be out in the open.

Oddly, though, Monbiot says nothing about the money and influence on the other side. Yes, the oil, tobacco and (above all) pharma lobbies are active in politics – every day I spend as an MEP teaches me quite how active. Even more frenetic, however, are the poverty lobbyists and green NGOs: Oxfam, Friends of the Earth, War on Want, the WWF, Greenpeaceand,not least, Christian Aid.

The global corporations and the global NGOs are mirror images of each other. Both distrust the democratic process, preferring to reach understandings with key opinion formers. Both, accordingly, love the EU, immediately intuiting that it was designed to be immune to public opinion. Yet, for some reason, most of those who complain about the anti-democratic tendencies of the multi-nationals have a blind spot when it comes to the eco-lobbies and anti-free-trade campaigns.

Incidentally, just to anticipate some of your comments, all Conservative MEPs record and publish every meeting they hold with lobbyists. I took the decision some years ago not to hold any. When a lobbyist requests a meeting, I reply that I should be happy to talk any of his clients who are my constituents, and that they should get in touch with me directly. I am, I realise, being very unfair to the overwhelming majority of lobbyists, who have regulations of their own to ensure ethical behaviour. But, like Monbiot, I've become obsessed with the way in which the democratic process is circumvented. Transparency won't solve the problem; but it's a start.